Articles by Section - NATION/WORLD

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Google is releasing its cheapest Chromebook laptops yet, two versions priced at $149 aimed at undercutting Microsoft's Windows franchise and gaining ground in even more classrooms.

DETROIT (AP) - Many tractor-trailers on the nation's roads are driven faster than the 75 mph their tires are designed to handle, a practice that has been linked to wrecks and blowouts but has largely escaped the attention of highway officials.

MOORE HAVEN, Fla. (AP) - An overloaded church van ran through a stop sign, crossed all four lanes of a dark rural highway and nosedived into a canal, killing eight people and injuring 10 early Monday in southwest Florida, authorities said.

Major U.S. stock indexes surged in afternoon trading Monday, as investors cheered encouraging economic data and the latest batch of corporate deal news. Expectations that any increase in the Federal Reserve's key interest rate this year will be gradual also helped lift the market.

FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) - A firefight erupted Monday when two people in a car tried to ram a National Security Agency gate at Fort Meade, killing at least one person, according to preliminary reports cited by two U.S. officials.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Defense Secretary Ash Carter is considering easing some military enlistment standards as part of a broader set of initiatives to better attract and keep quality service members and civilians across the Defense Department.

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope Wednesday, becoming the first pontiff from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium. He chose the name Francis, associating himself with the humble 13th-century Italian preacher who lived a life of poverty.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate Democrats unveiled a largely stand-pat budget Wednesday that calls for $1 trillion in new tax revenues over the coming decade but actually increases spending, while protecting the party's domestic policy priorities and adding $4 trillion more to the national debt than a slashing alternative from House Republicans.

WASHINGTON (AP) - In a stinging rebuke of the military's efforts to curb sexual assault, members of a Senate panel hammered Defense Department officials on Wednesday for making too little progress in combating the crimes and failing to improve a military justice system that victims described as slow and uncaring.

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Florida's lieutenant governor resigned and nearly 60 other people were charged in a widening scandal of a purported veterans charity that authorities said Wednesday was $300 million front for illegal gambling.

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Cardinals remained divided over who should be pope on Wednesday after three rounds of voting, an indication of disagreements about the direction of the Catholic church following the upheaval unleashed by Pope Benedict XVI's surprise resignation.

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Black smoke poured from the Sistine Chapel chimney on Tuesday, signaling that cardinals had failed on their first vote of the papal conclave to choose a new leader for the world's 1.2 billion Catholics and their troubled church.